Gender

Overview

In July 2012 the Executive Secretary established a Gender Task Team within the Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions (BRS) to develop targets and an approach to gender mainstreaming within the BRS Secretariat.

“Gender mainstreaming” has been defined by the United Nations Economic and Social Council as ‘a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated’.

The BRS Gender Action Plan (BRS-GAP) was finalized in December 2013 and includes a vision, a list of expected short, medium and long-term goals, and monitoring and reporting plans. The vision of the BRS-GAP aims to ensure that principles of gender equality are firmly embedded in activities undertaken by the BRS Secretariat.

At the conferences of the parties to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions in May 2015, the Secretariat provided to the Parties an information document on mainstreaming of gender within the Secretariat and on programmatic mainstreaming of gender issues in Secretariat training activities, projects and programmes. The Secretariat highlighted that, in order to mainstream gender in the Secretariat, it has also taking into consideration the approaches followed under other multilateral environmental agreements. In decisions BC-12/25, RC-7/15 and SC-7/33 the Parties requested the Executive Secretary to include a section on the implementation of the gender action plan in the next report on joint and convention-specific activities.